Parents of newborns do. So do college students pulling an "all-nighter" before a big exam.

And so does a woman who prefers to remain anonymous, for reasons you'll soon see.

One of her toughest and most tiring experiences was the time she put in back-to-back 16 hour work days: "I was so physically exhausted I could barely lift my water bottle."

Fortunately, she was still mentally sharp enough to manage some pretty sophisticated controls, and good thing, too, because the woman is an airline pilot -- and tired as she was, she still had more routes to fly.

Perhaps those pilots should have called in "sick" that day, or at least "fatigued." But they didn't. Other pilots do. It would be nice, though, if that was a decision pilots never had to make.

What can be done about this? Maybe the same thing kids in kindergarten do: get in some nap time.

Sleeping at the Controls: A Good Thing for Pilots?

The FAA wants to rewrite the flying-time rules for pilots. One proposal is to allow pilots to grab some zzz's during long-haul flights, or maybe even some not-so-long flights.

FAA spokesperson Laura Brown wants to be clear that the agency has received numerous comments and recommendations and "all are under review."

But what if? After all, nap time may not be as odd as it sounds. According to The Wall Street Journal, "several large foreign airlines, including British Airways, Qantas and some Asian carriers, have allowed one pilot at a time to catch a few minutes of shut-eye during routine cruise portions of certain flights."

Not everyone likes the idea: napping seems "stupid" to Dennis Petretti, who was an American Airlines pilot for 30 years before his retirement. He says, "How long should a nap be? And who's going to police it, tell you when to wake up?"

He believes the only solution is to shorten the punishing flight/work schedules. "But they won't do that," predicts Petretti, "because then they'd have to hire more people."

It is also questionable how much of a benefit napping would be for crews on regional carriers. These smaller airlines -- which now transport almost one out of every four air travelers in the United States -- often have hectic, choppy schedules. Our anonymous pilot flies for a regional and says, "I might fly seven short flights in a single 16-hour workday; I have no idea where I'd fit in a nap."